TIME magazine has published one of the saddest, most horrifying cover stories I have ever read. It is not horrifying like the carnage of war. It’s horrifying like the carnage of a culture that is committing slow-motion suicide. The essay documents a civilization-wide calamity on a scale that we have not seen before. The title of the article is “Porn and the Threat to Virility” by Belinda Luscombe. I am not linking to the article here simply because the cover art for the magazine and at least one of the images within the article are too explicit to share. Indeed, the article is itself fairly explicit and definitely NSFW. Having…
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Juan Williams says Pres. Obama’s SCOTUS nominee is not a centrist
Juan Williams writes in The Wall Street Journal that President Obabma’s nominee to the Supreme Court is not a centrist in his judicial philosophy. Here’s an excerpt: As Republicans and Democrats wrangle over Judge Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination to replace the late Antonin Scalia and whether or not to hold confirmation hearings, attention has been distracted from a fight of far more historical consequence. Over the past half century, regardless of whether a liberal or a conservative resides in the White House, the critical issue facing any Supreme Court nominee is where he or she stands on the political contest of wills over how to read the Constitution. In…
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Donald Trump is not pro-life
This shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but it is now established beyond all reasonable doubt that Donald Trump is not pro-life. How do we know that? He gives no evidence that he even knows what the pro-life position is. You can’t defend the sanctity of human life if you don’t even know what it is. Even worse is that when Trump tries to express his beliefs on abortion, he articulates a pro-abortion rights position. And he usually doesn’t even realize that’s what he’s done! His foot is in his mouth, but he is none the wiser. In an interview with CBS News today, he did it again (watch…
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Why “punish” abortionists but not those who receive abortions?
Yesterday, Donald Trump said in an interview that the law should “punish” women for getting abortions (see above). Trump quickly reversed himself in a subsequent press release. Still, in his initial remarks, Trump was able to accomplish a trifecta of political travesties. First, he projected a caricature regularly perpetrated by pro-abortion people against pro-lifers—that we care only for babies and not for their mothers. Second, while arguing for the pro-life position, he misrepresented what pro-lifers actually believe and alienated viewers from our cause. Third, Trump has put pro-lifers in a defensive position rather than strengthening the cause. All this while he was supposedly trying to help the cause! With “friends”…
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Would a President Trump be better than a President Clinton?
It’s no secret to readers of this blog that I am a #NeverTrump guy. I have explained what I mean by that here. The consistent objection that I hear to this position is that it amounts to a vote for Secretary Clinton. And nothing could be worse than electing Secretary Clinton. I disagree with that argument for a number of reasons. But no one has put a finer point on answering this objection than David French has today. He argues that the apparently self-evident conclusion that Trump is better than Clinton is by no means self-evident. He writes: Those of us who’ve pledged that we will never, ever vote for…
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Jesus Christ, the perfect “has been”
The strangest thing about the Christian faith is not our views on sexuality or politics. Those things are not even our most controversial of claims. The strangest thing about us is what the apostle Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: 3 that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. To be sure, that Jesus died is not the controversial part. Even unbelieving pagans agree with the death of Jesus as an historical fact. They don’t, however, agree…
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Death, Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then? One short sleep past,…
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What if the resurrection happened today?
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A must-read about the evangelical gender debate
Without question, 1 Timothy 2:12 is the most contested verse in the wider debate among evangelicals about women in ministry. The most contested clause within this most contested verse is “I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.” And the most contested word within this most contested clause is without a doubt authentein (often translated as “exercise authority”). The meaning of this term and even of its syntax has been the subject of no little dispute. And it has long been a crux interpretum among those engaged in the debate between complementarians and egalitarians. For two decades now, the most important book on…
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Why social conservatives should support #NeverTrump
Conservative opposition to Donald Trump’s candidacy for president divides into two groups. The first group consists of those who may not support Trump in the primaries but who plan to support him if he becomes the GOP nominee (e. g. Hugh Hewitt). The second group consists of those who oppose Trump in the primaries and who will also oppose him in the general should he become the GOP nominee (e.g. Ben Sasse). We might label the former as the “Stop Trump” conservatives and the latter as the “Never Trump” conservatives. The division presents Christians and social conservatives with a unique dilemma. While many agree that it would be best to…